A stent is a type of endovascular implant, usually generally tubular in shape, typically having a lattice, connected-wire tubular construction which is expandable to be permanently inserted into a blood vessel to provide mechanical support to the vessel and to maintain or re-establish a flow channel during or following angioplasty. The support structure of the stent is designed to prevent early collapse of a vessel that has been weakened and damaged by angioplasty. Insertion of stents has been shown to prevent negative remodeling and spasm of the vessel while healing of the damaged vessel wall proceeds over a period of months.
During the healing process, inflammation caused by angioplasty and stent implant injury often causes smooth muscle cell proliferation and regrowth inside the stent, thus partially closing the flow channel, and thereby reducing or eliminating the beneficial effect of the angioplasty/stenting procedure. This process is called restenosis. Blood clots may also form inside of the newly implanted stent due to the thrombotic nature of the stent surfaces, even when biocompatible materials are used to form the stent.
While large blood clots may not form during the angioplasty procedure itself or immediately post-procedure due to the current practice of injecting powerful anti-platelet drugs into the blood circulation, some thrombosis is always present, at least on a microscopic level, on stent surfaces and it is thought to play a significant role in the early stages of restenosis by establishing a biocompatible matrix on the surfaces of the stent whereupon smooth muscle cells may subsequently attach and multiply (Farb et al., Circulation, 110(8):940-947, 2004).
Stent coatings are known which contain bioactive agents that are designed to reduce or eliminate thrombosis or restenosis. Such bioactive agents may be dispersed or dissolved in either a bio-durable or bio-erodable polymer matrix which is applied as a coating over the entire filament surface. After implantation, the bioactive agent diffuses out of the polymer matrix and preferably into the surrounding tissue.
If the polymer is bioerodable, in addition to release of the drug through the process of diffusion, the bioactive agent may also be released as the polymer degrades or dissolves, making the agent more readily available to the surrounding tissue environment. Bioerodable stents and biodurable stents are known where the outer surfaces or even the entire bulk of the polymer material is porous. For example, PCT Publication No. WO 99/07308, which is commonly owned with the present application, discloses such stents, and is expressly incorporated by reference herein. When bioerodable polymers are used as drug delivery coatings, porosity is variously claimed to aid tissue ingrowth, make the erosion of the polymer more predictable, or to regulate or enhance the rate of drug release, as, for example, disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,099,562, 5,873,904, 5,342,348, 5,873,904, 5,707,385, 5,824,048, 5,527,337, 5,306,286, and 6,013,853.
A variety of agents specifically claimed to inhibit smooth muscle-cell proliferation, and thus inhibit restenosis, have been proposed for release from endovascular stents. As examples, U.S. Pat. No. 6,159,488 describes the use of a quinazolinone derivative; U.S. Pat. No. 6,171,609, the use of taxol, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,258,121, the use of paclitaxel, a cytotoxic agent thought to be the active ingredient in the agent taxol. The metal silver is cited in U.S. Pat. No. 5,873,904. Tranilast, a membrane stabilizing agent thought to have anti-inflammatory properties is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,733,327. More recently, rapamycin, an immunosuppressant reported to suppress both smooth muscle cell and endothelial cell growth, has been shown to have improved effectiveness against restenosis when delivered from a polymer coating on a stent. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,288,711 and 6,153,252. Also, in PCT Publication No. WO 97/35575, the macrocyclic triene immunosuppressive compound everolimus and related compounds have been proposed for treating restenosis. Commonly owned PCT publications WO 2003/090684 A3 and WO 03/090818 describe a polymer composition containing a macrocyclic triene compound and an endovascular stent and method for treating restenosis, respectively, both of which are incorporated herein by reference.
Given the advantages of implanting a stent designed to release a restenosis-inhibiting drug into vascular tissue following angioplasty, it would be desirable to produce a drug-eluting stent having additional advantages of (i) reducing the profile of the stent, both before and after placement at the site of vascular injury, (ii) eliminating chemical components that may cause irritation or inflammation at the stent site, and (iii) provide greater control of drug-release rate once the stent is placed at the site.